The following are excerpts of Chapter 2 from the book
entitled "The 12 steps to Holiness and Salvation" from the Works of St.
Alphonsus Liguori, which were adapted from the German of Rev. Paul Leick by
Rev. Cornelius J. Warren, C.SS.R. The book can be obtained from Tan Book and
Publishers, Inc., P.O. Box 424, Rockford, IL 61105 U.S.A.

Hope is a supernatural virtue by which we confidently
expect, in virtue of Godís promise, the endless happiness of Heaven and the
means necessary for its attainment. To be convinced of the inestimable value
of this virtue, and to have a constant incentive for its practice, it will
be profitable to consider the objects of our hope, its motives, its
qualities, and its effects.

The possession of God in Heaven

The
first and foremost object of our hope, the object by excellence, is the
possession of God in Heaven. We are not to suppose that the hope of
possessing God in Heaven in any way interferes with the virtue of love. They
are not opposed; in fact, the hope of eternal happiness is inseparably
united with love, for only in Heaven will the completion and perfection of
love be found.

According to St. Thomas Aquinas, with the idea of
friendship is intimately united the mutual sharing of goods, for as
friendship is nothing else but a mutual attraction it follows that friends
must do as much good to one another as is in their power. Without this
mutual sharing of goods, says the Angelic Doctor, there can be no genuine
friendship. Our Lord called His disciples His friends because He
communicated His mysteries to them: "I have called you friends because all
things whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you."
(John 15:15).

According to the teaching of St. Thomas, love does not
exclude the hope of the reward which God has prepared for us in Heaven; that
very reward is the principal object of our love, for it is nothing but God
Himself, the vision of whom is the eternal happiness of the elect. "Friendship,"
says the Angelic Doctor, "requires that a friend be in possession of his
friend." This is that mutual communication or surrender of which the spouse
in the Canticle speaks when he says: "My beloved is mine and I am his."
(Cant. 2:16). In Heaven the soul gives itself entirely to God and God gives
Himself entirely to the soul, as far as its capacity and merits will allow.

As long, therefore, as our soul is not perfectly united
with God in Heaven, it will never enjoy true peace. Those who love Our Lord
sincerely find peace of heart, it is true, in conformity to the will of God;
but perfect peace and perfect rest they shall never have here below. This we
shall acquire only with the attainment of our last end, the vision of God
face to face and His ineffable love. As long as the soul is separated from
her last end she shall continue to sigh with the prophet: "Behold in peace
is my bitterness most bitter." (Is. 38: 17).

"The good that I hope for," says St. Francis of Assisi, "is
so great that every suffering becomes for me a pleasure." All these
expressions of ardent longing are so many acts of perfect love. St. Thomas
teaches that the highest degree of love that a soul on earth can attain is
an ardent desire for Heaven, to be there united to God and to possess Him
forever. The greatest suffering that the souls in Purgatory endure proceeds
from this longing for the possession of God, and this pain is felt
especially by those who in life had but a feeble desire for Heaven. Saint
Robert Bellarmine thinks that in Purgatory there is a place where souls
endure no pains of sense, but are tortured solely by the loss of the
presence of God.

There are three things necessary for the attainment of
eternal life: the pardon of our sins, the victory over temptations, and the
crown of all graces, a holy death. These three things are accordingly the
objects of our hope. .

The
pardon of our sins

"Thou hast sinned, O Christian," says St. John Chrysostom,
"but dost thou desire forgiveness? Fear not, for Godís desire to grant it is
greater than your desire to receive it." If God sees an unfortunate wretch
in sin, He waits for a favorable opportunity to show him mercy. At times He
reveals to him the punishment he has deserved, to urge him to enter into
himself. "Thou hast given a warning to them that fear thee: that they may
flee from before the bow." (Ps. 59:6). At times He knocks on the door of the
sinnerís heart, hoping that He may open it: "Behold I stand before the gate
and knock."í (Apoc. 3:20). Sometimes He goes after the sinner and calls to
him like a compassionate father: Why will you be lost? "Why will you die, O
house of Israel?" (Ezech. 18:31).

It is doubtless true that we shall have a strict account
to render of all the sins we have committed, but who will be our judge? St.
John tells us: "Neither doth the Father judge any man, but hath given all
judgment to the Son." (John 5:22). It is to our Redeemer, then, that the
judgment has been entrusted, and St. Paul encourages us with the words: "Who
is he that shall condemn? Christ Jesus that died, yea that is risen also
again, who also maketh interecession for us." (Rom. 8:34). We shall be
judged by a loving Redeemer who, to save us from eternal death, delivered
Himself to death, and not content with that, now acts as our advocate with
the Father in Heaven.

St. Chrysostom says that every single wound of Jesus
Christ is a mouth that eloquently pleads with God for the forgiveness of our
sins. In the revelations of St. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi we read that one day
God spoke to her in the following words: "Through the revenge I took on the
body of My Son, My justice has been changed into clemency. His blood cries
not for vengeance, as did the blood of Abel; it asks for mercy, and My
justice cannot resist its pleading. The blood of Jesus binds the hands of
Justice so that they cannot be raised, as once they were, to punish."

Victory over temptation

Besides the pardon of our sins, we must confidently hope for the victory
over our temptations. In order to persevere in well-doing, our confidence
must not rest on our good resolutions. When we build on the foundation of
our own strength our edifice is sure to fall. To maintain ourselves in the
grace of God it is necessary, therefore, to place our hope in the merits of
Jesus Christ. With His assistance we shall persevere till death, even though
we be assailed by all the powers of earth and Hell.

There may be times when temptations are so violent that
sin seems unavoidable. We must be on our guard at such times not to lose
courage and give up the struggle. Our only resource is to hasten to Jesus
Crucified. He and He alone can sustain us. The Lord permits that from time
to time even the saints have such storms to endure. St. Paul says of himself:
"We were pressed out of measure above our strength, so that we were weary
even of life." (2 Cor. 1:8).

Although, as we have already seen, the power to avoid sin
is not from ourselves but from the grace of God, we must at the same time be
careful not to render ourselves weaker than we already are. There are
certain faults that we consider of no account, and yet they may be the
reason why God withdraws His supernatural light, and thus the power of the
devil is increased.

Such faults are the desire to be regarded as learned and
distinguished by the world; vanity in dress; the seeking for superfluous
comforts and luxuries; the habit of showing oneself offended by every unkind
word or want of attention; the inordinate desire to please others; the
omission of exercises of piety from human respect; disobedience in little
things; little aversions that are fostered in the heart; little lies and
jokes at the expense of charity; loss of time through idle conversations or
a greediness for news; in a word, every attachment for earthly things, and
every gratification of self-love may give the enemy an opportunity of
accomplishing our destruction. At all events, faults of this kind committed
with deliberation deprive us of that assistance of our Lord which would
protect us from falling into sin.

A happy death

We hope, finally, for the grace of a happy death. The
hour of death is for us the time of greatest anxiety. Jesus Christ alone can
give us the strength to suffer, with patience and profit, the trials of this
last decisive moment. At the approach of death we have more than ever to
fear from the assaults of Hell. The nearer we approach our goal, the more
will Hell strive to prevent our reaching it.

St. Eleazar, who had lived a life of great purity, was
violently tempted in the hour of death, but he did not lose courage for a
moment. To those standing around him he said: "The efforts of Hell at this
moment are very great, but by the merits of His suffering, our Saviour takes
from them all their power." St. Francis desired that at the hour of his
death the Passion of Christ be read to him, and St. Charles Borromeo had
pictures representing the suffering Saviour placed on his bed; while gazing
at these he gave up his soul to God. Our Lord Jesus wished to suffer death,
as St. Paul says, "that through death he might destroy him who had the
empire of death, that is to say, the devil; and might deliver them, who
through the fear of death were all their lifetime subject to servitude." (Heb.
2:14-15).

Motives for our hope

As to the motives on which our hope should rest, the
first we find in the promises made by God. On nearly every page of Holy
Scripture we find reasons for hoping in the Lord. We read there that God
promises eternal salvation and the means to attain it to those who believe
and pray: "All things, whatsoever you ask when ye pray, believe that you
shall receive; and they shall come unto you." (Mark 11:24). "Every one that
asketh receiveth." (Matt. 7:8).

The second motive of our hope is the sincere desire of
Our Lord to make us happy. God loves all His creatures. "Thou lovest all
things that are, and hatest none of the things which thou hast made." (Wis.
11:25). But every love, says St. Augustine, possesses an active force and
cannot remain idle. Consequently, love contains in its very essence the idea
of benevolence, and one who loves cannot but do good to the object of his
love if it is at all possible for him. "Love," says Aristotle, "endeavors to
accomplish what it considers good for the object loved." If, therefore, God
loves all men, He must also desire that all men attain eternal happiness,
for this is the highest and only good of man since it is the end for which
man was created. "You have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end life
everlasting." (Rom. 6:22).

As a third and powerful motive for hope in God, we have
the merits of Jesus Christ. Long before our Saviour had appeared on earth,
the royal Psalmist David placed all his hope in Him: "Into thy hands I
commend my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, the God of truth." (Ps.
30:6). How much more, therefore, ought we to place our confidence in Jesus
now that He has come and accomplished the work of our redemption. Full of
trust and assurance, we ought to repeat with the royal Psalmist: "íInto Thy
hands O Lord, I commend my spirit: Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, the God of
truth." Thou art faithful to Thy promises.

Do not forget, says the Venerable John of Avila, that
between the Eternal Father and ourselves there is a Mediator, Jesus Christ,
to whom we are united by bonds of love so strong that nothing can ever break
them unless we ourselves break them by mortal sin. The blood of Jesus Christ
cries for mercy in our behalf, and that cry is so loud that the clamor of
our sins cannot be heard. No one is lost, therefore, because satisfaction
has not been made for him, but because by the neglect of the Sacraments he
fails to share in the satisfaction which Jesus Christ has made. (Because of the neglect of confessing our sins to a
Catholic priest in the confessional box.)

The intercession of Mary

A fourth motive for unbounded confidence is the powerful intercession of
Mary our Mother. St. Bernard says that we have access to the Eternal Father
through His Divine Son, who is a Mediator of justice. But we have access to
the Son through His holy Mother, who is the mediatrix of grace and who, by
her intercession, has obtained for us what Jesus Christ has merited by His
death. "Through thee who hast found grace, may we have access to the Son, O
Mother of our Salvation, in order that through thee He may receive us who
through thee was given to us." All goods and graces, therefore, that we
receive from God come to us through the intercession of Mary. And why is
this? St. Bernard replies: "Because God has wished it so."

A further reason of this privilege of Mary, St. Augustine
gives us when he says: "Mary can rightly be called our Mother because by her
love she contributed towards giving us the life of grace and making us
members of the mystic body of Christ." As Mary, therefore, by her love
contributed towards the spiritual regeneration of the faithful, God has
willed that through her intercession all men shall obtain the life of grace
here and the life of glory hereafter. On this account the Church desires us
to invoke her as "our life, our sweetness and our hope."

Accordingly, St. Bernard exhorts us to have constant
recourse to this divine Mother because her petitions are certainly answered.
"Hasten to Mary," he writes, "for I say it without hesitation, the Son will
certainly hear the Mother. She is the ladder of safety for poor sinners. She
is my greatest assurance; she is the only ground of my hope." He calls Mary
a ladder for sinners, for as you cannot mount to the third round before
putting the foot on the second, nor to the second before reaching the first,
so you can reach God only through Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ only
through Mary. The saint calls Mary his greatest assurance and the only
ground of his hope, for it is his firm conviction that God desires all
graces that He bestows on us to come through the hands of Mary.

The Lord is able and willing to grant us eternal
happiness, and what is more He has promised it to all who keep His
Commandments; for this end He pledges Himself to grant to all who seek them
the graces necessary to fulfill His commands. It is nevertheless true that
even Christian hope is not altogether free from a certain fear; but as St.
Thomas says: "We have nothing to fear on the part of God, but only from
ourselves." It is quite possible that we may fail to cooperate with Godís
grace and even place obstacles in its way.

Our cooperation is necessary for the attainment of
eternal happiness ó and this cooperation is uncertain. God desires,
therefore, that on the one hand we foster a certain anxiety in order that we
may not, by trusting to our own strength, be put to confusion; but on the
other hand He wishes us to be absolutely certain that it is His will to make
us eternally happy and that He will give us all the graces we need if we but
ask Him. We should therefore trust with unwavering confidence in His
goodness. St. Thomas says: "We must confidently expect eternal happiness
from the power and mercy of God, believing firmly that God can make us happy
and that He wishes to do so."

Secondly, our hope must be founded on God alone. The Lord
forbids us to place our trust in creatures: "Put not your trust in princes."
(Ps. 145:2). "Cursed be the man that trusteth in man." (Jer. 17:5). God
desires us not to build on creatures because He does not want us to be
attached to them with inordinate love. St. Vincent de Paul advises us not to
count much on the protection of men, for if we do the Lord will withdraw
from us; on the other hand, the more we grow in the love of God the more we
will trust in Him. "I have run the way of thy Commandments when thou didst
enlarge my heart" (Ps. 118:32), by confidence.

But someone may say: If God alone is our hope, how can
the Church address Mary as "Our hope"? Let us listen to what St. Thomas says
on this point. We can place our hope in anyone, says the saint, in a twofold
manner; we can regard one as the principal and ultimate cause of our hope,
or as the secondary and mediate cause. For example, one may hope for a favor
from a king and from his minister or favorite. The king would be the
principal or ultimate cause from which he hopes, the minister or favorite
the mediate or intercessory. If the latter grants the favor, it comes
nevertheless from the former, but through the intercession of the latter.

Now as the King of Heaven is Infinite Goodness itself, He
desires to enrich us with His graces; but as great confidence on our part is
necessary to obtain them, He has, in order to increase our confidence, given
us His own Mother as our Mother and mediatrix to assist us. Therefore He
wishes us to place our hope of salvation and of all goods and graces in her.

According to the words of the prophet, they who put their
trust in creatures are cursed. This passage refers to those who disregard
their God and place their hope in the friendship and favor of man. But those
who hope in Mary, the Mother of God, who has the power to obtain for them
grace and eternal life, will be blessed by God. They give great joy to His
loving heart, for He desires to see honored and loved that exalted creature
who on earth loved and honored Him more than all men and angels together.

We are right therefore in calling the Blessed Virgin our
hope, for by means of her intercession we hope to obtain what we never could
obtain by our feeble prayers alone. We beg her for her intercession, says
Suarez, in order that the dignity of the intercession may supply what is
wanting in us. By invoking Mary with confidence, we manifest no distrust in
the mercy of God, but simply fear on account of our own unworthiness. Holy
Church is justified therefore in calling Mary "The Mother of holy hope," and
by this she wishes to say that Mary awakens in us the hope of the
inestimable goods of eternity.

We must cooperate

Thirdly, our hope must be an active hope. In order that our hope may not be
in vain it must labor; that is to say, to unbounded confidence in God we
must unite the use of the means of salvation and sanctification which the
Divine Majesty has given us: otherwise we should belong to those idle souls
who tempt the Lord. We must act as if the obtaining of our salvation
depended entirely on ourselves, and yet we must place all our confidence in
God and be thoroughly convinced that of ourselves we are utterly unable to
attain what we desire.

God accomplishes everything by means of His grace, but He
nevertheless desires our cooperation. If this cooperation, insignificant
though it is, be wanting, God withdraws from us and treats us as indolent
servants deserving of naught but to be cast out into exterior darkness. "Wherefore,
brethren, labor the more, that by good works, you may make sure your calling
and election." (2 Peter 1:10).

But what have we to do? Above all things we must pray.
And how long must we pray? Until, says St. John Chrysostom, we hear the
favorable sentence that assures us of eternal salvation. And he adds: He who
says: "I will not stop praying until I am eternally happy," will certainly
be eternally happy. "Know you not," says the Apostle, "that they that run in
the race all run indeed, but one receiveth the prize? So run that you may
obtain." (I Cor. 9:24). In order to be eternally happy it is not enough,
therefore, merely to pray; we must continue to pray until we are in
possession of the crown that God has promised us.

If we desire to be happy for all eternity we must imitate
David the prophet, who kept his eyes always directed to the Lord in order to
implore His help and not be overcome by his enemies: "My eyes are ever
towards the Lord, for he shall pluck my feet out of the snare." (Ps. 24:15).
The devil is never tired of laying snares for our destruction: "Your
adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may
devour." (l Peter 5:8). Therefore we must keep our weapons ever in our hands
to defend ourselves against such an enemy. We must say with the royal
Psalmist: "I will pursue my enemies... until they are consumed." (Ps.
17:38).

By means of the assistance we receive through prayer we
must endeavor to keep the Commandments of God and do violence to ourselves
so as not to yield to the temptations of Hell: "The kingdom of heaven
suffereth violence and the violent bear it away." (Matt. 11:12). We must do
violence to ourselves in temptations by conquering ourselves and mortifying
our senses so as not to be overcome by the enemy of our souls.

And when we have been guilty of a fault, says St. Ambrose,
let us do violence to the Lord by prayers and tears in order to obtain His
forgiveness. To inspire us with courage the saint continues: "O blessed
violence that God does not punish with His wrath but receives with mercy and
reward! The greater this violence the more pleasing it is to Jesus Christ."
He concludes with the following words: "We must rule over ourselves by
subduing our evil passions in order to win Heaven which Jesus Christ has
merited for us."